From my experience with boys, I was the one who potty trained them.... when they are only little then always sitting is probably a good (tidy) idea.... Daddy helped out later if we needed to make an emergency stop outside somewhere, or just to show them later that they can stand also (they have to be a certain height to the toilet anyways for this to really be an option for them, no?)  I've heard of people putting potties in more convenient places.... maybe it's a good idea if the toilet is not so accessible (through a safety gate or up some stairs), or if there is only one toilet in the house and several people (no one likes line-ups when it's urgent!).... but I always prefer to keep the bathroom stuff happening in the bathroom!  I've got 4 of my kids toilet-trained now and none of them used a potty chair.  They were all a little bit older (closer to 3)... but I would just hold them and that worked fine for them.... (and much easier for me!)  I think when they are littler, then sometimes they are a little nervous of the big toilet, and to be successful they really do need to be relaxed, eh?  But I would give it a try on the big toilet if possible because, like I said, that is a lot easier and quicker to get the bathroom business done.... try an insert if they are nervous about it.  Just relax about it.... they all do eventually get it.  I was sure one of mine would never get it.... but then he turned 4 and declared himself a "big boy" and a week later the whole toilet-training business was a done-deal.

Congratulations Nikita!  (I'm sure you are already convinced, though, that the hip pain was totally worth it!)

I've made all my 'Step One' single word cards (referring to Doman teaching), with 8-1/2" X 11" (I think that's A4 size, isn't it?) and I print the words in 180pt or 200pt bold red letters lengthwise across the card (I adjust the margins smaller so it can fit more too).  I print 2 words per card and then I cut the card lengthwise across the middle.  I'm sure this must be big enough print... maybe not for the baby starting very VERY early (shortly after birth), I'm not an expert.  I can't fit 'hippopotamus' with this size, but if I leave the really long words until a little later, I figure that I'll just gradually decrease the print size and keep the same sized cards.  This size is very easy for me to manipulate, and to store too.

When I spoke to someone from IAHP, they said that this would be fine... do what works best for you.  The books are only for a guideline for how the program should be done, but the details like exact number of times you show the cards or exact print size you use or exact materials.... those aren't as important as having a method that you can do consistantly and affordably (we can't all laminate everything!) and it will still work just fine.  The guidelines in the books are just guidelines... just get started and have lots and lots of fun and they will learn.  (There are plenty of little people who never see word cards even, and never have such a systematic reading program, but their parents are reading to them and exposing them to words everyday consistently and they are also learning to read at younger ages).

[(where did you get it?)]

Thank you for this post (where did you get it?)

All these helpful posts are encouraging me more and more to get started doing more with my children's language learning.... so far they have been exposed to music, videos (movies and kids shows with alternate language tracks), and children's language learning videos, sometimes a foreign language 'word book' here and there, and occasionally I will tell them what something is called in another language.  Some great tips here for guidance in really getting started.... thanks!

Doesn't amazon have different sellers, and depending on the seller you are buying from, some will ship only domestic, some to one or two countries, and some will ship anywhere international?  I think if they won't ship to your country, then it will tell you before you finish the order somehow.  Amazon is really great... one time I ordered a whole bunch of books because I thought that they had no shipping charges, and then I found out that there were shipping charges on the particular books I ordered and I didn't want the books anymore at all, so I was able to cancel all the orders easily and I had no problems.  At first I didn't know how I would cancel these orders, but I phoned a 1-800 number (a tollfree number) and they were very very helpful too.  I feel perfectly confident ordering anything from Amazon.

Thank you, townlily, and welcome to the forum.  That is very encouraging to show that whole-word approach is not only working for 4-5 year olds, but it's working better and they are having more fun...I read that the right brain is more receptive to learning when they are in a good mood and not feeling stressed about something (so important that learning is fun!).  Also that you are teaching them to read at the same time that they are learning English as a 2nd language.... I am hoping to teach my children another language and I didn't think to teach them to read it at the same time (maybe too confusing I thought, or too difficult at the same time).  What are the native languages of the little students in your class?  What sort of different methods do you use in your classroom?

[My idea to help the kids learn German....]

My idea to help the kids learn German.... (since I don't speak German and my native speaking German husband is not in the habit to read them bedtime stories)....

Take a children's German story book (or create one with larger words if your goal is to teach to read also), and make a recording of my husband reading the book in German.... making a pause or a little bell sound or something so we know when to turn the page.  Then, throughout the day or at bedtime, I can sit with the child(ren) and show them the book while we listen to Daddy reading the story to us.  We can all learn German at the same time.

Also, because my Dutch understanding is about 75% for everyday conversation, I find that when he speaks in German to me then I understand a lot of what he says too (Dutch and German are closely related languages).... so maybe it would be okay if the language between us gradually became German.  I'm not personally very motivated to learn German (like I posted, it's my 4th choice of foreign language... after Dutch, French, Spanish) but I want to support my husband's preference and it's a good opportunity for the kids that we haven't taken advantage of enough so far.  (When DH's parents were still alive, we visited just about every weekend, so at least the older 3 have been exposed to the sounds from an early age, especially the 15yo). 

From the library my little ones enjoy this series of VHS videos (I think it comes in 10 different languages)... Bilingual Baby - German (very Doman-friendly and they like it over and over again)

http://www.amazon.ca/Bilingual-Baby-German/dp/B00004XPNY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1246420709&sr=8-1


Also from the library, look on the back of the kids movies... a few of them have German language tracks... I find the newer the movie, the more likely it will have multiple language tracks.

Also in the library, we have a section that has foreign language books... there are often one or two children's books in that section... maybe you could find a German person to make a recording of the reading of the book (and 'Tinkerbell' could ring the bell to turn the page?), and you could photocopy the book (yes, I know, not strictly legal)... maybe even modifying your copy to include larger print size.  (At our library, this foreign collection is rotated with other libraries from time to time, so I would personally not make a recording without somehow having my own copy of the material!)

I have only just thought of this idea, because I was talking with my husband (1st language German!) about speaking in German to our children (the little ones in particular)... and I said that if he is putting in the effort, then I will support him by finding all the resources I can to support German language learning in our house.  (It is his 1st choice of foreign language to teach them... my 4th choice).  I said I would find German story books too.... but the thing is he very very rarely ever reads to them... bedtime stories is my department.... but I can't read or pronounce much German.... so then I came up with this idea.  Does it sound like a good one?  Books are important I think for developing vocabulary that you wouldn't normally use in everyday speech.... in speech we say "the stone made a splash in the water"... in a book we read "the pebble sent ripples across the shimmering lake".  I love books!

Other ideas for obtaining toys that are less expensive (it hurts to spend a bunch of money on something and they are bored of it within days!)....

Thrift stores and garage sales.... ebay or other bargain online buying.
When I was living in town, there was a toy lending library.  Another spin on this would be to swap toys with friends for a while.  Keep it fresh!

Yeah, their interests change quickly as they are developing their skills.  Right now one of his favourite activities (11 months old) is to put a 5" flexible magnetix stick (his older brother's toy... it's about the size of a short pencil).... he likes to put this thing into an empty DVD case and close the case, and then open it and take it out, then put it back... over and over again.  Or similar, he likes to put something in my hand and then I give it back.... back and forth, he loves it.  But they don't need some toy from the store to develop these important skills, do they.... they are so driven to learn that they will find it if you are allowing them to explore things in your house.

When I am trying to buy a toy for a little one (like birthday or Christmas... mostly because I get everyone else something, not because I think they need more toys!) I always try to look for the classic toys that I remember from childhood.... I figure that if the toy is still around after all these years, then it must be a good seller for a reason.  Fisher-Price comes to mind... my little ones like the Fisher-Price we have, and (unlike when I was little) now they make the people chunky so they are safe for the 1 year olds too.  Another criteria that I use for buying toys is that I don't want to have too many battery-draining toys or noisy toys.... yeah, kids love them, but there's only so much that adults can take!  And another criteria is that I like to keep things simple to organize, so for the little guys we now have a big box of wooden train (Thomas the Train mostly), a Duplo box, a Fisher-price box, and only a small drawer in the family room with miscellaneous toys like rattles, matchbox cars, baby blocks, or small stuffies.  Oh, also we have quite a collection of those Schleich animal figurines because every time we went to the zoo, instead of spending hours in the gift shop and coming home with a smorgasbord of cheap toys, we always allowed each child to pick out one of those animals.  When it's time to go shopping for a gift, I always prefer to buy something that will go into one of those boxes... (or the bookshelf of course!)... and that way it is always easy to clean up and keep things organized.  I prefer to buy a small amount of quality toys rather than a large amount of cheaply-made toys.

And those are a few more of my toy-buying thoughts...

These are the favourite things that my 11 month old likes to play with:

Right now he is absolutely engrossed with an empty cookie bag. (cost $0)
He loves balls and blocks; empty plastic containers (cleaned of course); spoons, bowls, funnels, pots & pans, things from the kitchen; baby board books (durable ones!); anything that doesn't belong to him; the list is endless..... the one thing to describe all the 'toys' he likes to play with is "anything new that he has never or rarely played with before".  Don't spend too much money on toys at this age because they have such a hunger for learning new things that they quickly get bored with the same stuff.  Just let him play with anything you can find that is safe... remember that his favourite, favourite toy is YOU (Peekaboo and dancing together).  When we're out and about, if he is fussing, then my car keys will keep him happy... it's not so hygienic though-- maybe he'd love his own keychain with real keys!  I have a little box of Duplo that he plays with for quite a while whenever I get it down (about once a week or so)... lego will be great when he is older.  I always say that if I was only going to buy my kids 3 toys (toys that get the most play value!) it would be water, sand, and lego.... nothing keeps them engrossed in their play as much as water, sand, and lego.

Little Reader sounds just awesome... and very time-saving too!... but we are one income and baby #7 on the way and it just isn''t in the budget.  Making flashcards is more time consuming and doesn't have some of the advantages of LR (flashing faster, varying colour/font,variety of 'dot' icons, native sounds for foreign languages) but we have a cheap supply of ink and paper is fairly cheap and the effort I put into cards will be for several children.

Yes, by phonics I mean learning the sounds of the letters, then words with short vowels (cat, bed, sit), then words with long vowels (eat, time, see), then adding the blends (trip, black, clap), then other special sounds (break, knob, thumb), etc, and the readers start with "The fat cat sat on the mat" and gradually progress to more and more difficult text.

But my little 5yo guy, very eager to 'do school', is not very excited about learning those letter sounds.  He does understand that you put together 'c','a', and 't' and then you get cat.  But you really can't get going with reading stories until they know the sounds that those 26 letters make.  When I talked to IAHP yesterday, the very nice lady said that it was probably an advantage that he doesn't know his letter sounds yet (he only knows a few) if I'm planning to use flashcards/whole-words with him.  I started this thread just because I want to know if anyone has had success teaching their 5yo kid with flashcards to read.  He's not too happy with what we're doing, and I'm preparing to do Doman with the 3yo and 11mo... if it'll work, then why not the 5yo also.  But I've heard people say to do phonics after 4yo or 5yo, and not flashcards, so I am uncertain what to do.

No, you cannot physically overfeed a breastfed baby.  That is one of the amazing things.  Depending on how often they nurse, and for how long they nurse, the milk will be a different composition of fat calories, so that no matter how often the baby nurses, they will get the right amount of what they need (unless you're not nursing them often enough at all, of course).  The milk at the beginning of the feed is thinner, and the hindmilk at the end of the feed is richer.  It is the optimum nutrition, so their healthy little bodies won't be missing vitamins and nutrients giving them signals to eat more than they would normally (like what happens to teens and adults who are gaining too much weight because their undernourished bodies keep telling them to eat more).  Also, when an infant drops off to sleep at the breast, they are barely sucking anymore and barely any or no milk is actually coming out then... they are just pacifying.  Not so with the bottle... there is less variance in how fast the milk comes out.  Your breastmilk adjusts in it's composition in many ways to suit the needs of your baby, but the formula is always the same consistency that you put in the bottle... (sometimes, like in 3rd world countries, they can't really afford formula and it is watered down for the baby).  Even the antibodies that your milk provides will adjust in concentration, so that when your baby is weaning and drinking less and less milk, the concentration of antibodies will actually be more concentrated (to fight the same germs that you're both exposed to).  Breastfeeding is a really wonderful gift to give your baby, but of course the most important thing that your baby needs from you is your love and consistency.

On a more personal note, I am currently nursing our 6th baby.  With my first baby, I did nurse her a lot... every time she seemed hungry or tired or upset... and we hardly ever heard her cry (you're still going to hear her crying in the carseat or at diaper changes sometimes... ).  She breastfed so often for so long, that I didn't get my periods back for 2.5 years!  With later babies, I did not have the time to sit with them to nurse all the time, so if they were tired or upset about something, I was much more likely to just hold them or carry them around and that worked too to help them stop crying.  Looking back now, it is my personal belief that it is better not to breastfeed them for every emotional need of theirs.  I wonder if it sets up a pattern for their life, that every time they are upset or bored they will run to the fridge (this is a little problem of our eldest now).  I am no psychologist or anything, but I only mention my experience so you have something to think about when your baby is fussing and you are trying to decide whether or not she needs to breastfeed.  They fuss for many things, and you want to meet the needs of your baby all the time to build that trusting relationship.... sometimes they need a clean diaper, or need to make a BM, or they're cold or hot, or tired and overstimulated.... there's lots of things that you can do to make sure your baby never has to cry very much.

I was just wondering, for you "professional parents" doing the Doman program with your little ones, how much time are you spending (or were you spending before Little Reader arrived in your computer) preparing the materials for Doman Reading, Doman Math, Doman Encyclopedic Knowledge, or anything else Doman related?  Did you make your materials just like they suggest, (laminated?, poster board?, POIs?)  Did you do a full program as they suggested, or something modified?  Did you do anything more time saving (like use regular paper, skip the POIs, get pictures off the internet instead of cut from calendars and magazines)?

I'm just very interested to know what your experience has been, what time commitment you made, and whether, looking back, you feel it was time well spent.

[Math]

Math:  we start with Abeka (very thorough, strong foundation, nicely coloured workbooks) and then, when they are at about grade 3 or 4, we switch to Saxon textbooks (because we have them all except the Calculus, and that's more cost effective... I prefer Abeka, but Saxon is a close 2nd)

Language Arts:  for Phonics, I've used Abeka the most... I love the way their readers progress and the stories often emphasize good values (wow, those Americans sure are patriotic, eh?!)  Because we've never used anything except the readers (which gets them to a good reading level quite early) some of my kids needed a little extra phonics work and we've used MCP Plaid Phonics several times... just the first 3 or 4 books.  Grammar has always been with Abeka, but I don't always start that until the 3rd or 4th grade.  Spelling we've rarely done formally... I really think that if they are reading lots, then they are learning to spell.  Sometimes we've used the placement tests in the Spelling Power book and I always find they are at or above grade.  When we have done spelling, I've used Spelling Workout.  We have not been very strong with a writing program.  I hope this will be okay, but I never liked writing in school and then when I got to college and had to do some writing, I aced the course just because I was able to articulate my ideas in an intelligent way and I had good grammar and spelling... so my conclusion was that good writing will come with maturity when you have well formed ideas to express and the confidence to say what is on your mind.  Perhaps having your children write in a journal or to penpals on a regular basis should be sufficient.  Handwriting, Abeka again.  Literature, we've read some really great classic novels for bedtime stories (Uncle Tom's Cabin, Little Women...) but we've never 'studied' literature yet, although I think it would be a good idea to get in some literature study for highschool as preparation for university/college.

History:  when they are younger we read a lot of historical fiction for bedtime stories... Dear Canada series, My America series, Magic Treehouse series, Trailblazers series, Daughters of the Faith series, and books by Barbara Greenwood (like Pioneer Story).  When they hit upper elementary or highschool, then I've started using Abeka History/Geography and we like it a lot.

Science:  For the younger people we just get books and DVDs from the library... they love Bill Nye the Science Guy, and we've watched many of the DK Eyewitness DVDs, and we've seen some Moody Science Classics DVDs.  Also we have several books like "In the Days of Noah", "Dinosaurs by Design", "Life in the Great Ice Age", etc. which support the Biblical account of Creation.  When they are good independent readers (Grade 4 or so) then they read through the Apologia Young Explorer books (creation-based), and before highschool they start the "Exploring Creation with..." series from Apologia... a very thorough science curriculum that can take them right up to university level science with disecting, microscope work, experiments, and even specializing in areas of interest like marine biology for example.

French:  Rosetta Stone

Music/Art:  Not really structured except they have taken piano, violin, and/or guitar lessons at times.

Phys.Ed.:  Walking, biking, swimming lessons.

Bible:  we've never done much formally, but for bedtime stories we've read all the books by Patricia St. John... we all love them.

I get this CD from the library sometimes... it's called Baby Steps French (other languages too), and in the little booklet it explains that just exposing the babies to the sounds of the target language when they are in those first few months will help them even if noone can speak to them in that language yet.  I know a lady who teaches Spanish (to English speaking adults) and she remembers one fellow that lived in a Spanish speaking country as an infant, but then he moved and never heard Spanish again... but in this class where he is now learning Spanish, he is making the most authentic Spanish pronunciation that she has heard from any of her students.  This story confirms what the little booklet says... early exposure to the unique sounds of a foreign language will help prevent a baby from losing the ability to make those sounds... at birth every baby has the potential to learn any language with perfect native pronunciation.  So keep playing those language tapes and anything else you can find at the library, even if you aren't prepared to start formally teaching your babe the target language.